Success does not come easily to an indie author, if it comes at all. How does one define success? Word of mouth, which translates to sales is my number one criteria. In the book-plugging world, word of mouth equals reviews. Those are slippery things to capture. I dipped my toe in the waters of paid promos quite late in the year, as a desperation move, really. All my books just sat there on my digital bookshelf, forlorn, gathering so much dust one of those roaring leaf blowers couldn't even dislodge the powder. I'd somehow garnered one book review; I'm still not sure how. I think the reader closed her eyes and pointed at her Amazon screen and landed on my novella ~ a fluke that's pretty difficult to recreate.
It's demoralizing to have twelve published books that no one wants. I did all I could think to do: reworked my book descriptions, revised my covers, lowered my prices as much as I could without flat out giving my books away. I put myself out there on Facebook, even though I detest that site, and I got a handful of followers ~ fellow authors who wanted me to buy their books. I tried Instagram and immediately gathered followers, who I didn't take the time to research (possibly bots ~ I seem to attract a lot of those on X), but suffice it to say that none of them ever bought one copy of my works. I found a list of book reviewers by chance and contacted a handful of them. One did write a review of Shadow Song, for which I am grateful. Another agreed to review it in a few months. I don't consider that a smashing success.
Yes, I did try a BookBub ad once last summer, but it was a bust. Of course, I didn't know I was doing it all wrong until I found David Gaughran's blog. His tutorial was so thorough it gave me the itch to try again. I put The Diner Girl up for free and received a decent return, but alas, no reviews. Thinking, hey, that ad did so well (not in terms of reviews, obviously) that I should actually try selling a book through an ad. Cue the canned laughter. It's difficult enough convincing readers to download a free book. Ninety-nine cents is simply a bridge too far.
But before I bade goodbye to 2023, I decided to give ads one last go. Having learned my lesson about the amount readers are willing to pay ($0.00), I stuck New Kaitlyn on there for free, and set an ad run of December 31 - January 1. No coherent reason for those dates; just that possibly people would be looking for new reads for the new year.
What I have finally learned: Australia is a bust (sorry, David Gaughran). Canada is somewhat better, but prior to this ad I had avoided the US market completely, since Mister Gaughran had convinced me that the American market is saturated. That is actually not true. For this ad, I targeted the US and Canada, and (to date) have derived the most clicks from the US. Did that translate to downloads? Well, four. And I'm not particularly upset by that number. I still have today before my ad budget runs out, but face it, most of the hungover folks out there aren't browsing their BookBub newsletter. They can barely stumble to the medicine cabinet to down a couple of Tylenol before burying themselves back under the covers.
I won't be doing any ads this year, except possibly for my new book, currently unfinished and untitled. And for that I may try one of those finicky places that will only consider freshly-published works. I will put out the call for ARC readers in my newsletter, but that's rather grasping at straws ~ can't hurt, most likely won't help.
I will reiterate what I've said many times in the past: It's good to try things, if for no other reason than to find out what doesn't work. Overall, I spent less than $100.00 on paid ads, which, spread out over a year was only a minor hit to my budget. Learning isn't always free.
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